TEN#29: "SOA Business Process Management (BPM) Products" Methodology and Technology Services | Home | Courses | Certification | Projects | Papers | Online Store | Contact Us | THE ENTERPRISE NEWSLETTER Issue 29: SOA BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT (BPM) Home PRODUCTS Courses Certification Printable PDF Version Projects Papers CONTENTS TEN Archive Contact Us ● Introduction Search ● Upcoming Events Links ● Feature: SOA BPM Products Online Store ❍ Microsoft BizTalk ❍ IBM WebSphere ❍ Oracle BPEL ❍ SAP NetWeaver ❍ Intalio ● Summary ● References ● Previous Issues of TEN ● Glossary of Terms ● New Subscribers to TEN Introduction PERTH, AUSTRALIA – May 5, 2005: This is Issue No: 29 of "The Technology Newsletter" (TEN) - a free quarterly email newsletter that is published world-wide. You can opt-out of receiving future issues of TEN by replying with “REMOVE <your email address>” in the Subject. Please ensure you use the same email address that was used to send this issue to you. http://www.ies.aust.com/ten/ten29.htm (1 of 15)16-Jan-06 10:53:34 AM TEN#29: "SOA Business Process Management (BPM) Products" We have moved all past issues of “The Enterprise Newsletter” (TEN) to our new web site at http://www.ies.aust.com/. Click on the Papers link from any page or use the following direct link: ● TEN Archive: http://www.ies.aust.com/ten/ten_index.htm Clive Finkelstein TEN - The Enterprise Newsletter Back to Contents Upcoming Events A series of 2-day seminars, titled: "Rapid Enterprise Architecture Delivery" will be presented in May - June by Clive Finkelstein. These are scheduled in Auckland NZ (May 9-10), Sydney (May 12-13) and Melbourne (June 6-7). While these three seminars are now completely sold out, some seats are still available in Brisbane (June 9-10). ■ The Marcus Evans PDF brochure can be downloaded from http://www. marcusevans.com.au/pdf/tr98.pdf. ■ Details of the Brisbane seminar are available by phoning Marcus Evans in Sydney on +61-2-9223 2137 or by email from marketing@marcusevansau. com. Clive Finkelstein will also be presenting a 1-day version of this seminar in the USA in May, titled: "Rapid Delivery of Enterprise Architecture": ■ At the TDWI World Conference in Baltimore MD on Sunday May 15 (http:// www.tdwi.org/). ■ In Richmond VA on Thursday May 19: ❍ Sponsored by Data Blueprint from 8:30am-11:30am: (http://www. datablueprint.com/company/events/05_19_2005.htm) ❍ For the DAMA-CV Chapter from 1:30pm-5:30pm: (visit http://www.damacv.org/). http://www.ies.aust.com/ten/ten29.htm (2 of 15)16-Jan-06 10:53:34 AM TEN#29: "SOA Business Process Management (BPM) Products" For details of Methodology and Technology courses, or for Project Descriptions, visit the IES web site at http://www.ies.aust.com/. Click on the Courses or Projects link from any page. Back to Contents Feature: SOA Business Process Management (BPM) Products In an earlier issue (TEN#27) I discussed three Business Process Management (BPM) languages: Business Process Execution Language (BPEL); Business Process Modeling Language (BPML); and Business Process Specification Schema (BPSS) for ebXML. ■ TEN#27 - See http://www.ies.aust.com/ten/ten27.htm. In this issue (TEN#29) I discuss some of the major BPM software vendors and their products. These products automatically generate XML-based executable code directly from workflow diagrams or process models in one or more BPM language: BPEL, BPML or BPSS. I describe the following SOA BPM products for automatic BPM code generation: ■ Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004 ■ IBM WebSphere Business Integration Server Foundation ■ Oracle BPEL Server ■ SAP NetWeaver ■ Intalio | n3 In the years ahead, these SOA BPM products – and others still in development – promise (in time) to transform systems development from a slow, error-prone manual coding effort eventually into the rapid, automatic generation of executable BPM code. Today when business changes occur, we have had to manually change code in monolithic programs and manually retest. Instead, in a few years using SOA BPM products these changes will be made diagrammatically at the process model or workflow diagram level. Executable code that reflects these changes will then be automatically regenerated. Back to Contents http://www.ies.aust.com/ten/ten29.htm (3 of 15)16-Jan-06 10:53:34 AM TEN#29: "SOA Business Process Management (BPM) Products" Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004 The current edition of BizTalk is Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004. This uses the BizTalk Orchestration Designer for BPM, based on Visio. Microsoft use the term “orchestration” (rather than “workflow”) to differentiate the support by BizTalk Server 2004 for long-running business processes that have many document interchanges over days or weeks. They consider the term “workflow” refers mainly to short- running, people-based processes that execute in minutes or hours. An example of a BizTalk Orchestration diagram is shown in Figure 1. Figure 1: Microsoft BizTalk Orchestration Designer (Source: Microsoft) Figure 2 shows that Microsoft provides extensive project support in BizTalk Server with the definition, generation and testing of BizTalk projects within the Visual Studio. NET Integrated Development Environment. Business documents are used to generate XML Schema Definition (XSD) files, used with BizTalk Data Mapper for data transformation. XML input queues are pipelines for message input, with processed messages directed to message output queues for further pipeline processing. Within Visual Studio.NET, visual business processes are defined using the BizTalk Orchestration Designer (see Figure 1). Extensive training in BizTalk is available online from the Microsoft web site.[1] http://www.ies.aust.com/ten/ten29.htm (4 of 15)16-Jan-06 10:53:34 AM TEN#29: "SOA Business Process Management (BPM) Products" Figure 2: Microsoft BizTalk Project Development (Source: Microsoft) The most volatile parts of any business process are typically the business rules. These rules are coded as conditional logic in most systems development methods. When these rules change, the conditional logic must also be changed in every application program that references the relevant rules. To avoid this problem, BizTalk Server 2004 also includes a Business Rules Engine. This is a significant advance in the maintenance of business processes, when business rules change. Each business rule and associated conditional statements are expressed using business terminology in the rules engine as shown in Figure 3. Each rule is referenced from all Orchestration diagrams that need to execute the rule. When a rule is changed in the engine, it is then automatically changed in every Orchestration diagram that refers to the changed rule: with dramatic improvement in maintenance cost and responsiveness to business change. http://www.ies.aust.com/ten/ten29.htm (5 of 15)16-Jan-06 10:53:34 AM TEN#29: "SOA Business Process Management (BPM) Products" Figure 3: BizTalk Server 2004 Business Rules Engine (Source: Microsoft) BizTalk Server 2004 also includes support for Business Activity Monitoring and real- time tracking. It generates executable BPEL XML-based code automatically from orchestration diagrams and provides full support for Web Services SOAP, WSDL and UDDI standards. Microsoft summarizes the features of BizTalk Server 2004 as follows: ● “Business Activity Monitoring: Give information workers a real-time view of running business processes with Microsoft Office tools. ● Real-time Tracking: Follow the real-time progress of documents and processes in BizTalk Server applications. ● Microsoft Visual Studio® .NET Development Environment: Increase developer productivity through a common development environment, and inherit all the capabilities of Visual Studio .NET and the .NET Framework. ● Microsoft Office InfoPath™ Integration: … InfoPath is a Microsoft Office System program that provides … a front-end to BizTalk Server 2004 for entering XML and consuming Web services. ● Single Sign-on: Provide unified authentication between heterogeneous systems and applications (Windows and non-Windows). ● Human-based Workflow: Integrate people and processes with a single orchestration engine. ● Business Process Execution Language (BPEL): Simplify cross-platform interoperability for process orchestration with standards developed in conjunction with other industry leaders (automatic generation of BPEL from Orchestration diagrams.) ● XML Web Services: Provide ground-up support for XML Web services standards such as Web Services Description Language (WSDL) and http://www.ies.aust.com/ten/ten29.htm (6 of 15)16-Jan-06 10:53:34 AM TEN#29: "SOA Business Process Management (BPM) Products" Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) … ● Business Rules: Dynamically change business processes to maximize organizational flexibility. ● Enhanced Scalability: Construct massively scalable messaging and orchestration-based applications through scale-out architecture.” Back to Contents IBM WebSphere Business Integration Server Foundation IBM offers extensive support for Web Services and business process integration through its WebSphere product family. WebSphere Studio Application Developer is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for developing J2EE Web Services. Business Process Management is provided by the WebSphere Business Integration product family. We discussed earlier that business process models are used so that business rules and processes can be clearly documented for users. These schematic process diagrams communicate business aspects of processes for users; IT developers